


Once, We Were Still Alive

by orphan_account



Category: Skullgirls
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 22:27:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/627194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first step to creating a weapon is to take something, and break it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once, We Were Still Alive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JackOfNone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackOfNone/gifts).



The girl is named Carol. She is fifteen years old, and lives in Maplecrest with her mother and father. Her family is not affiliated with the Medicis, and she does not carry herself like one, but her father owes them money, and she is best friends with one of the heirs. Ultimately, no one would think to look for her if she disappeared.

Pick up is easy. She doesn’t know what to expect. She can hardly defend herself. There is barely a struggle, and there is not a sound. In a moment, she slumps unconscious. As far as anyone who might have noticed, it looks like Valentine is carrying along someone who has fainted, or who is very drunk. 

Everywhere in Canopy, but especially in this neighborhood, the leaves are turning orange. Soon, they will be brown.

 

Strapping her on the table takes no effort. She is too sedated to react, and even if she wasn’t, her stature is too small to resist. Still, she could cause some damage if she knew how. But there is no point in thinking about that.

The girl is in a dead sleep when the doctor carts over their tools. At this stage, they will not need to do much direct work. They will have to restrain her if necessary. If something should go awry, they will have to interfere, but in these experiments, mistakes tend to happen too fast for anyone to react.

They can’t afford any mistakes, however. This is their last measure of SG-type blood. After many tests, they found that the blood was only compatible with females (though it seemed obvious, they had to be sure), and they could only assume that it worked best with younger ones. The blood also needed to come first, or else the subject would not survive.

Brain Drain now stands in the back of the room, near the record player. With his thickly covered fingers, he holds the needle. He is quite selective about when he uses his hands. “Are you ready, Valentine?”

She goes to the blood bag dangling above the table. She looks down at the girl’s closed eyes, listens to the barely audible puffs of her chest. She nods.

“Then, let us begin.” He lets his needle slip onto the vinyl, just as the blood slips into the girl.

Bones have different reactions to the blood. Once, a prisoner’s rib cage tore open, his shivering heart turning blue and then black, and then not moving at all. Another subject’s legs broke into stakes of bone, and bled out too quickly for stabilization. They have found that the results usually depend on where the blood is inserted. For this girl, it is in her spine.

The third symphony starts along with the screams. They seem as though they are coming out from her sleep, as though she is having some thrashing nightmare. Her head snaps back and her spine arches up and the skin on it at first squirms, then writhes, then erupts apart in a mess of blood as a chain of bone and tendons and nerves twists out like a maggot. She bucks and heaves violently, and the screams do not stop, but grow louder and louder, cracking. Her spit is tinged with red.

Without a word, the doctor turns up the volume on the music. Between the shrieks that nearly deafen her, Valentine can hear him humming. He watches the girl, arms crossed. His fingers tap out a rhythm. “Hold her head down,” he finally says.

Bone is clattering off the operating table. Valentine hovers over the girl, whose eyes are open but not staring at anything in particular. Eyelids twitch with frenzy. Her irises seem to be turning red. This is a good sign.

This is their eighty-fourth attempt. It is their most successful one so far. A smile plays at Valentine’s lips.

The girl’s entire body jerks, twists, rattles. Valentine takes her skull and grips it in place.

 

Brain Drain asks her to take notes while he installs the Buer blades. He must be very confident to work on them so soon.

Valentine first takes a drink of bourbon. Swishes it around her mouth. Swallows, and lets the taste sit in her mouth. This isn’t a good bottle. She fills another glass, however, and takes the near-empty bottle with her into the break room.

It is a small, cramped space. Every lab had one, even if they were rarely used. Everyone else is already inside, and they all acknowledge her in their own way. Valentine slumps into her chair, and takes a drink.

“You should’ve been there, Val.” The half-gigan spins her chair, horns gleaming under white light. “We just got back, and it was fun. What’ve you been up to?”

“Research. With the doctor.”

“Ohh?” She arched her eyebrows, then giggled. “Research on the female body, I bet.”

A syringe flies past her nose and hits the dartboard. Bull’s eye. “I don’t think he’s even interested in women that way,” the dark-haired nurse murmurs, her voice muffled by the belts stitched over her mouth.

“Yeah, you’re right.” The blonde spins around some more. “I think he’s gay. Or he’s in love with science.” 

Valentine stirs her drink with a leftover pen, glances around the room at the old pinups and cutouts and the photos of autumn trees. “We’re experimenting with the parasites to test their compatibility with the Buer.”

The red-eyed nurse doesn’t even look up from her notes. ”I thought that the kingdom decommissioned those experiments.”

“Nah,” the girl says, snickering. “Nothing can stand in the way of Brain Drain and science. Their love is too pure.”

Behind Valentine, there sat the oldest nurse, her chuckle low and throaty. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing he’s done.”

“Oh really?” She twirled the chair again and said, “Give us the scoop,” before smacking her toes against the desk with a hissed ouch.

“Later,” the woman chuckles. “It’ll be your bedtime story.”

Normally, her stories were about growing up in the north. She told them during the longest nights, where Valentine sat with bitter smoke stinging her nose, and the matriarch’s rough voice filling her ears. The older woman talked about how people were sent there as punishment. They went to labor camps and worked until they died, their bodies buried under railroad tracks and walls. Those who tried to run or fight back got red-hot coals shoved in their mouths.

The woman saw all of those things, growing up. And she could still chuckle on those nights.

Someday Valentine would be able to look back, and laugh.

 

There is still much that needs to be done.

When she returns, the girl is still alive. Her body slumps, her fingers twitch, her head is slack – but she is alive. The blades on her spine reflect the harsh light of the lamp.

“Her body still assimilates the blood,” the doctor says in his monotone. “While we still have time, we must inject the parasites. Remember to monitor the soul contamination.”

“All right,” she says.

One by one they plug tubes and wires into flesh. They will fill this girl with her weapons, steel pins and hungry worms. 

The song that now plays is a nocturne. Valentine has never much liked nocturnes.

 

The first time they had tested the Gae Bolga, it had been a failure. As black spikes and claws and nails, they would come out of any point they could – fingertips, toes, elbows, knees, shoulders. And the throat. The parasites had poured out of that man’s throat, a spike through his jugular, and then they crawled up further, spines through his nose, his cheeks, his eyes – by then the howls had stopped.

Another experiment, which seemed successful at first, had failed when the parasites abruptly eviscerated their host. Everything came spilling out on the floor, at least somewhat consumed by a metallic black.

As the needle slips around the record, Valentine slips another through the girl’s face. Brushing past the nurse’s arms, a spike snaps and squelches out of the girl’s elbow, twists broken bone, and smaller spines pool off of it. The sudden burst makes blood spatter on her arms. There is a brief pause, and they yelp back into her arm and churn out of her wrist. 

She can imagine the chemicals pumping through the girl’s skin. Flesh being torn through and chewed apart, and stitching back together. Valentine shoves the respirator back down on the subject’s face, makes her gulp down more of the gas. Still, the girl grunts and moans like a dumb animal. 

The spikes jut out of her fingertips again, pry her nails apart. Valentine remembers when her nails were torn right out. It seems like they sting a little, even now.

There are no more screams. Just defeated chokes, bubbling out of the girl’s mouth. 

Valentine shakes her head. There is a bitter taste in her mouth. But she says nothing. 

 

The girl hangs limp. Like someone on a rack. Or swinging on a noose. 

She doesn’t move anymore. She doesn’t make a sound. She doesn’t struggle. Sometimes a shock makes her jolt and jerk once, but her vital signs are stable otherwise.

The mechanisms are inserted in her spine and in her skull. Electric bursts. Psychic pulses.

Brain Drain thinks a weapon is useless if it can’t be controlled. His eyes flicker as he studies the girl. She imagines his voice slipping into the girl’s head, the same way it did into her own. She imagines everything beautiful slipping out of her fingers, ghosts repelled to the back of her mind. 

That bitter taste comes back again. She swallows it. It must be the bourbon.

If this girl were strong, Valentine thinks, she would be able to free herself. She would not let herself become a madman’s puppet. She would not let them do this to her. She would wreck this lab and eviscerate everyone and let their guts spill out on the floor and she would go out and tear apart this stupid city, this ridiculous country, these absurd rules to this absurd game they were stuck in—

Valentine wonders if she’s chosen the wrong person for the job.

 

This is the result.

She is sprawled out on the table. Her eyes are a hollow black. With a hiss, the Buer blades drop back down to their table, click together and fall still.

“Testing complete,” she says.

The way the girl is stretched across the table, the way her fingers are crooked and spread out, the way her fingernails are black with dried blood, it reminds her of a dead tree. Of something that doesn’t bear thinking.

The doctor’s hands drop to his sides. “Then I will give its orders.”

There is no need for her to be there anymore, so she steps outside, stripping off her gloves and flinging them into the trash. She thinks of bourbon, but it’s all out, and she hasn’t got vodka. 

Instead, she goes to the washroom. There, she washes her hands under the cold water, rubbing them raw and red, until the blood on them is only her own.


End file.
